The Feeling of Action Tendencies: On the Emotional Regulation of Goal-Directed Behavior

Abstract

In this article, we review the nature of the functional and causal relationship between neurophysiologically/psychologically generated states of emotional feeling and action tendencies and extrapolate a novel perspective. Emotion theory, over the past century and beyond, has tended to regard feeling and action tendency as independent phenomena: attempts to outline the functional and causal relationship that exists between them have been framed therein. Classically, such relationships have been viewed as unidirectional, but an argument for bidirectionality rooted in a dynamic systems perspective has gained strength in recent years whereby the feeling–action tendency relationship is viewed as a composite whole. On the basis of our review of somatic–visceral theories of feelings, we argue that feelings are grounded upon neural-dynamic representations (elevated and stable activation patterns) of action tendency. Such representations amount to predictions updated by cognitive and bodily feedback. Specifically, we view emotional feelings as minimalist predictions of the action tendency (what the agent is physiologically and cognitively primed to do) in a given situation. The essence of this point is captured by our exposition of action tendency prediction–feedback loops which we consider, above all, in the context of emotion regulation, and in particular, of emotional regulation of goal-directed behavior. The perspective outlined may be of use to emotion theorists, computational modelers, and roboticists.

Characterization of affective states by pupillary dynamics and autonomic correlates

“…Although these findings address a link between ANS and emotional events, it is still a debated question whether the ANS activity is driven by cognitive elaboration of the emotional event (James, 1894; Damasio, 1994; Levenson, 2003) or vice versa (Cannon, 1927; Arnold, 1960; Schachter and Singer, 1962). For a complete review of the recent contributions to the debate, see Lowe and Ziemke (2011). …”

A study on relation between crowd emotional feelings and action tendencies

“…That is to say, emotions and feelings are interchangeable terms in Study 1. That's the reason why we decided to use a combined term emotional feelings [13] to describe all the crowd emotions or feelings in this paper.…”

“…There is no consensus about whether feelings should be synonymous with, or separable from, emotions [13]. As Prinz [16] stated "when emotions are felt, the feeling is the emotion: the emotion is a conscious perception of a patterned change in the body."…”

“…Therefore, in this study, emotions and feelings are interchangeable terms. We decide to use crowd emotional feelings [13] to describe all the collected terms. …”

How sustainable are different levels of consciousness?

“…A wide variety of functions are influenced by emotions, such as attention (Bocanegra & Zeelenberg, 2011;Fredrickson & Branigan, 2005;Koster, Crombez, Van Damme, Verschuere & De Houwer, 2004;Öhman, Flykt & Esteves, 2001), reasoning and decision making (De Martino, 2006;Blanchette, 2006;Sohn et al, 2015;Zeelenberg, Nelissen, Breugelmans & Pieters et al 2008) as well as arousal and memory (Bradley et al, 1992;Cahill & McGaugh, 1995). It has been claimed that emotions are economical and effective means to respond to input in a beneficial way (Bechara & Damasio, 2005;Lowe & Ziemke, 2011;Muramatsu & Hanoch, 2005).…”